Refrigerated dough products have been popular for many years and are highly desired not only due to their taste and the dietary satisfaction that is achieved by consuming them, but also, because the preparation of such products, particularly within a home environment, can serve many useful and/or desirable functions. First of all, refrigerated dough products are convenient. In most cases, consumers can prepare fresh baked goods in the home in a matter of minutes simply by unwrapping, separating and baking the dough products. Secondly, the preparation of such dough products can serve to provide entertainment for those who enjoy cooking these items, a sense of satisfaction to those who enjoy preparing such items, and furthermore, can create a comfortable, "homey" atmosphere by virtue of the aroma that is produced when these items are baked.
Many refrigerated dough products contain fillings within the dough, e.g., cinnamon or fruit fillings, which are desirably moist in appearance and taste. However, including an amount of moisture, i.e., in the form of water, fruit juice, or other consumable liquid, necessary to impart these desirable characteristics to the filling presents many difficulties to the manufacturer of such products. That is, fillings with a high moisture content typically will have a low viscosity and will tend to be very fluid, rendering them difficult to apply to dough products in a manufacturing setting. Furthermore, once so applied, the filling can impart a slipperiness to the dough product, and thus, can make it difficult to form the dough into shapes around the filling. Finally, once packaged, these dough products are typically stored for relatively long periods of time, i.e., during transport from the manufacturer to the retail environment, retail shelf time, and in storage at the end user facility. Such long periods of storage are generally not well tolerated by dough products including a high moisture filling, as the moisture has a tendency to migrate between the filling and the dough and/or into the packaging. Moisture migration between the filling and the dough can adversely affect the quality of the filling, as well as the dough, and thus, the overall dough product quality can suffer.
In addition to the problems that dough products including such desirable high moisture fillings present to the manufacturer of such products, such dough products can also prove problematic for the end-user to prepare and/or once so prepared, can result in suboptimal baked dough products. That is, moisture migration from the filling into the packaging can result in liquid pooling within the packaging which, in turn, can render the dough product slippery and difficult for the end-user to handle. Additionally, when these dough products are baked, further moisture migration may result in a degradation of the quality of the filling, as well as in the quality of the baked product surrounding the filling.
In order to address these difficulties, while yet providing a dough product with the desired product attributes, several attempts have been made to provide stable fillings that are yet moist in taste and appearance. For example, several attempts have focused on providing fillings with no moisture, instead incorporating a relatively high amount of fat in efforts to concurrently provide the desirable taste, texture and appearance, while also addressing the handling and storage issues that high moisture fillings can present when incorporated into dough products. Although such fillings can be effectively incorporated into dough products that are desirably stored for prolonged periods and in fact, provide such dough products with satisfactory organoleptic qualities, the organoleptic properties of these fillings could yet be improved. That is, the exclusion of moisture from these fillings can result in the filling having a somewhat dry taste or appearance, which in turn can result in a consuming experience that is less than ideal.
Additional efforts to provide fillings sith shelf-life stability and bake stability for use in dough products have focused on the inclusion of gelling agents, e.g., gums and starches, into fillings to be used in applications where shelf-life stability and/or bake stability is required or desired. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,185,576 issued to Ross, U.S. Pat. No. 3,352,688 issued to Messina and U.S. Pat. No. 4,670,272 issued to Chen et al, as well as Japanese Patent Application No. Sho 62-79147 describe shelf and/or bake stable bakery fillings comprising an amount of at least one gum, alone or in combination with an amount of one or more starches. More specifically, each of these disclosures teach including amounts of such gelling agents and/or starches effective to form a viscous matrix intended, in turn, to be effective to reduce or eliminate moisture migration between the dough and the filling. However, the utilization of only such gelling agents, either alone or in combination, is often not effective to substantially reduce, or eliminate, moisture migration and as a result, dough products incorporating such fillings are not as stable to moisture migration as would be desirable in applications where prolonged storage of the dough product is contemplated.
Additionally, the inclusion of such gelling agents tends to give the resulting filling the consistency of a jelly, which can result in the filling being difficult to apply to dough products in a manufacturing setting. Furthermore, while a jelly consistency can be desirable in some applications, in others it would be desirable to have a filling with a creamy, rather than a gelled, texture. Such a creamy texture can be difficult to achieve when using such gelling agents, a difficulty that is well illustrated by the disclosure of Chen. In particular, Chen et al teach the formation of a creme filling using such a gelling agent, however, in order to provide a creamy texture the filling must be cooked and aerated. The addition of such steps to a manufacturing process can not only undesirably add complexity to the process and lengthen the processing time, but also can introduce additional cost in the form of the additional equipment required to perform such steps.
Yet other attempts to provide dough products including fillings with shelf life stability and bake stability, have focused on the development of emulsion based fillings, i.e., either water-in-oil or oil-in-water emulsion based fillings, that exhibit the desirable organoleptic qualities of moistness, thickness and stickiness while yet being capable of being incorporated into dough products without substantially detrimentally affecting the dough structure, even after periods of prolonged storage. One such filling is described in co-pending commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/782,461. It is thought that such fillings are effective in filled dough applications due at least in substantial part to the fact that a continuous, oil phase of such fillings can act to substantially "enrobe", a dispersed, aqueous phase, thereby preventing the interaction of the moisture, or any dough antagonistic ingredients such as sugar or flavorings that may be incorporated therein, with the surrounding dough. While these fillings can thus be used to provide baked, filled dough products with excellent visual and organoleptic properties, emulsion-based fillings can be difficult to manufacture and handle. That is, specialized manufacturing equipment is typically needed to prepare emulsions, and once formed, emulsions can be unstable, thus requiring special handling equipment keep the emulsion intact.
Thus, there is a need for stable, moist fillings for use in dough products, and in particular, for use in dough products that are desirably stored for prolonged periods of time. Such fillings, although desirably including an amount of moisture so as to provide them with pleasing organoleptic characteristics, would desirably not exert a substantial negative effect on the surrounding dough product during prolonged periods of storage and subsequent baking. Additionally, such fillings would desirably be readily and easily manufactured without requiring the utilization of specialized manufacturing equipment, and furthermore, would desirably have handling properties that allow them to be readily and easily incorporated into a variety of dough products.